The Cleansing, by Victoria Alvear: Book Review

A Defiant Vestal Virgin

Alvear takes a piece of chillingly relevant Roman history and weaves it into a terrifying, heart wrenching, fast-paced novel. At the center is Mia, a defiant, independent Vestal Virgin. These priestesses are not intended to be strong-willed. They are meant to be mild and subservient. They are meant to sit demurely by Vesta’s fire in a state of enforced “purity” until some powerful man needs to shift blame for his political or military failure onto someone else. Then they are accused of violating their sacred purity, of acting like a wanton whore, no matter how unlikely such behavior would be for any woman who knew she’d be buried alive for it, and how absurd the priestess’s connection to the social disaster is.

Relevant Feminist Themes

This novel explores one of the archetypal examples in human history of woman shaming, of purity culture—an attitude that lingers in the modern world. Mia’s strength draws the ire of the priests and priestesses who rule her life. She refuses to accept their cruelty and their false story about her nature. Her battle and its surprising outcome are powerfully told in this gripping tale. Readers of The Cleansing will be immersed in a profound understanding of a range of complex failings in our society’s views of sexuality and women. Readers will find themselves on the last page wondering how they got there so quickly and yet, at the same time, in wonder at what they have taken in.

Where to find The Cleansing and more about Victoria

The Cleansing on Amazon (affiliate link).

The Cleansing on Bookshop.org.

Victoria Alvear’s website.

For more reading

If you enjoy feminist historical fiction, you might like to read my review of V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, which takes a very supernatural turn with its defiant women.